Morality only “progresses” as a phenomenon of gift, in which what is good and worth doing is seen as good and worth doing by a subsequent generation, which takes on the morality of their fathers and repeats it, as their own morality. But this means that progress in morality is never assured. It may not [...]
Although Christians cannot be above the fray because we are part of it—called and commanded to love our neighbours, and even our enemies—we are nonetheless beyond the fray in the sense that we are called to something beyond it. “My own view is that Christianity is all about progress,” wrote ‘Eric’ in a comment on [...]
Could I ask a small favor? Could we either retire the adjective “progressive” whenever it is used in a political context or, if not, could we apply it more universally? Confused? Stay tuned. To be sure, the word has a lengthy history In American politics. That history stretches back to the early days of the [...]
No society can survive if its people cannot achieve general consensus on certain fundamental understandings regarding the nature of the person and of society itself. It may seem too much to say that our country has never been as divided as it is today. Anti-war protests, race riots, and especially a bloody Civil War would [...]
As G.K. Chesterton observed what was happening all around him in England, he was led to conclude that there were historical moments when what he termed “over-civilization” and what he termed “barbarism” were close to becoming one and the same thing. Virtually the same thing might be said of America today. Just where is our [...]
Prohibition had cultivated both a growing mistrust and a growing acceptance of state power. It was becoming not only a legal and political mechanism to regulate personal habits and to modify social customs but also a means to impose cultural unity. Whatever dangers it posed to liberty, government regulation was by the 1920s a fact [...]
The pride of place that cultural Christianity once enjoyed in America is increasingly sidelined by a new, woke progressivism which, though purporting to be neutral and science-based, is in fact a competing religious ideology. The more that it dominates our cultural and political institutions, the more it can misuse the coercive powers of the state [...]
The progressive left seems to want us to become something akin to social democratic Europe with all its cultural trimmings, while the right wants us to remain more like the America of old. To satisfy both parties, is the answer for the United States of America to become like the Europe of old? Just where [...]
The progressive vision of history should give any intelligent and humane person pause. The progressive vision demands conflict; in its understanding, history is made up of winners and losers. This flies directly against the long tradition of republican and Judeo-Christian thought that calls for the “common good,” not the greater good of those with might. [...]
The currently pervading approach to American history presents America in the worst possible light, distorting the full truth of our past and damaging our political health. Our K-12 schools need a restoration of temporal continuity, the key to revitalizing history and civics education that forms young people who both appreciate the gifts of the past [...]
The Great War altered relations between the state and its citizens. The Progressives had inspired—or perhaps, more accurately, had revived—fears that regulation was necessary if modern society were to reach its potential and not descend into chaos. They had advocated state intervention to solve a host of social and economic problems and, ultimately, to create [...]
Political philosophers have always understood that there was a close relationship between conceptions of time and politics. Modern, and now postmodern politics, are no different. Patrick Deneen has recently argued that modern ideologies are defined first and foremost by their relationship to time. Introduction “The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite, / That [...]
The end of history concept—the belief that there will be an endpoint to social, intellectual, and political progress—is a powerful idea that pervades modern-day secular thought. The spread of gay rights, the rise of universal government-run health insurance, and environmental awareness has hubristically led “progressive” secularists to describe a coming “Age of Enlightenment” when Americans [...]
Rousseau’s bastard sons sit off, signing their suicide pacts— man born free yet everywhere in subclauses and stipulations. […]